Review: Complete Poems, 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings

Title: Complete Poems, 1904-1962
Author: E.E. Cummings
Published: 1992
Source: Purchased
Genre: Poetry
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Caution: May contain spoilers

At the time of his death in 1962, E. E. Cummings was, next to Robert Frost, the most widely read poet in America. Combining Thoreau's controlled belligerence with the brash abandon of an uninhibited bohemian, Cummings, together with Pound, Eliot, and William Carlos Williams, helped bring about the twentieth-century revolution in literary expression. He is recognized on the one hand as the author of some of the most beautiful lyric poems written in the English language, and on the other as one of the most inventive American poets of his time in the worlds of Richard Kostelanetz, "the major American poet of the middle-twentieth-century."

My Thoughts:

This is kind of a book review, but not completely a book review. This is more along the lines of a couple paragraphs of me going off on the experience of reading every poem by the wonderful E.E. Cummings over all of 2012. That’s right. I read every E.E. Cummings poem in a year. I am quite proud of this.

I had read a few handfuls of E.E. Cummings poems before buying this book but I knew I was going to love it. And I wasn’t wrong. I was completely right. I LOVED THESE POEMS. I started marking the page every time I found a poem I wanted to reread again and again. I ended up marking 52 altogether. There’s just something about his poetry that draws me in and captivates me.

It’s hard to explain completely how much you can take away from poetry when you read it. I can see how certain poems or poets can be hard to read, but when you find one that is enjoyable it is truly a great experience. E.E. Cummings is that poet to me.

My Rating: